There are simply more people using the mobile phone today than just the previous year. Yes, that’s the ‘Apple’ we are talking about, that would help ‘byte’ away ailments. No, that is not simply limited to the upper strata of the society, but also extends to those living below the poverty line, who are making use of the technology.
The trend of using mobile applications, therefore, has caught on with the entire world – as is the case here. A combination of mobile apps and health care, especially in a developing country such as Pakistan are already prone to natural disasters and an ever-escalating unemployment rate, with the incapacity to have wiped out age-old health practices: such as curbing infant and maternal mortality; malnourishment; HIV etc. is a promising marriage. These first-aid kits in the hands of many might just be our digital Nightingales!
It is no surprise then, how all the global trends in place right now all point out to a change in the health-care arena. Money is being poured into health-care IT. The funds have tripled in the USA from an injection of $343 million to $955 million. These new developments – on their own – speak volumes about how bankable this industry has become, given everything is becoming digitized and fed into the mobile phone as an application anyway.
However, the place where health care IT is at right now, it is still difficult to ascertain how much longer it will take to pick up pace. The mobile applications in this age, says Lynn Dunbrack, an analyst at IDC Health Insights, are still in a “look up, receive alerts” mode, where the use of mobile health-care technology is simply limited to health-care records, not different from a pager or phone call.
A complete change in architecture, bring-your-own-devices policies, enterprise mobile management, security and mobile app development is needed in the realm of health-care IT, which is what Cleveland Clinic was able to achieve with its health-care staff. The hurdle that IT industry faces currently is that there is too much happening at once: implementing HER systems, creating health information exchanges, trying to explore big data analytics and moving to a new payment model under health care reform – all these can, ironical as it is, create poor health in mobile app developers themselves realistically speaking.
Globally – as it so happens – domestically, as well, trends help to suggest that the mobile applications are helping in: better adoption of best practices in medicine, bridging communication between doctors and patients, and other doctors; and lastly, helping patients stay healthy. A supercomputer by the name of Dr.Watson has been engineered to understand the diagnosis of patients better, for example. With regards improved communication, Omnifluent, another app, helps doctors translate into different languages better, thus allowing them to treat their patients with greater ease. Doximity – a social network platform built especially for doctors – makes the doctor community well-knitted, thereby, making for a greater compliant and formidable force. Besides these, there are scores of menu-tracking apps, calorie counters and sleep-monitoring apps such as Fitbit and Lark to help people assess their health patterns.
The trend in Pakistan, too, given the recent flair for using mobile technology, first, in the elections, and very recently in the realm of crime-mapping for the police, (thank you Technology for People’s Initiative, Lahore) has paved a path clean for app developers in this business. It is now that they are being sought by utilities such as health-care to make fund-raising easier. Basit Ali, CEO of Eccentrica Technologies, talks about how the wind has changed with the way people are perceiving technology. It is no longer the chicken-comes-before-the-egg kind of concept: problems are being solved as they crop up.
Basit is challenged every time a client comes in with their concerns and woes that are easily smoothed with Eccentrica’s well-rounded workforce. Shaukat Khanum, another client, came to them with the purpose of helping in raising funds, which as it turned out, led to the development of an application to not just raise funds, but also in developing user engagement and image-building. Shaukat Khanum has complete control over the content of the mobile application, says Basit Ali who is very keen on taking it forward to other hospitals, institutions and trusts, if they so happen to be willing.
Considering the statistics on doctors is already very low, and the price of apples, like everything else, increases rapidly; a one-time investment in the ‘Apple,’ would – as reads the title and the age-old adage – keep the doctors away – away on their phones.
